Previews

Alone in the Dark

The most innovative thing about Alone in the Dark is quite possibly an element that will have little to do with its minute-to-minute gameplay. But from the sounds of it, it may just make the whole experience more attractive to players not especially receptive to being made to feel frustrated by their games. In order to ensure that, as Eden's producer Nour Polloni put it, every player will be able to complete Alone in the Dark, the game will allow you skip entire sequences at your discretion.

Whether it's a boss fight, puzzle, or combat sequence that has you befuddled, you'll be able to skip ahead and continue on with the story. These features are accessible from an element in the options not dissimilar to what you'd see in DVD chapter-selection menus -- think chapter titles, accompanied by a linear graph of varying-size boxes denoting individual game sequences. You can skip ahead as much as you like, playing the game completely out of sequence if you choose, but there is one caveat: you won't be able to watch the ending unless you've completed every scene.

While this experiment is sure to rankle the challenge-obsessed (and maybe also the Achievement-addled if it ends up putting a plug in their stream of brownie points), it will be interesting to see how the sort of linear, narrative game experience that Alone in the Dark provides will hold up if played piecemeal. Eden has demonstrated how it'll attempt to tie together chapters using TV's "previously on" trope. The question is, will that be enough when all the meaningful memories we associate with a game have much more to do with what we do as opposed to what we're told by talking heads, cut-scenes, and dialog boxes? We'll soon find out.